Shunroku Hata

Shunroku Hata (26 July 1879-10 May 1962) was the commander of the China Expeditionary Army of Japan from 1 March 1941 to 23 November 1944, succeeding Toshizo Nishio and preceding Yasuji Okamura.

Biography
Shunroku Hata was born on 26 July 1879 in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, and he graduated from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in 1901, serving as a lieutenant in the artillery during the Russo-Japanese War just a few years later. In 1919, as a Lieutenant-Colonel, he was among the Japanese delegation to the Treaty of Versailles, which formally ended World War II. In 1936, as a Lieutenant-General, he was given command of the Taiwan Army of Japan before assuming command of the China Expeditionary Army on 1 March 1941 and fighting in the Second Sino-Japanese War. After the war's end, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for war crimes, but he was paroled in 1954 and died in 1962 in Tokyo after forming a charitable organization for IJA war veterans.